En Garde
by Val Evenstar
Summary: When someone gets a bad idea.... everyone gets in trouble. Crossover with anything and everything we choose. Giftfic challenge for Elspeth.Davidson
1. Relativity

**En Garde**

_by Val Evenstar... and perhaps Elspeth.Davidson

* * *

_

**Author's Note: **Merry Christmas, ED. You want your real presents, you'll have to wait... but in the meantime (Internet permitting) take this. Evil grin. Really, really, really evil grin. As in supervillian-ish evil grin.

* * *

**Prologue: A Small Insertion**

"Val – I can't believe this."

"Why not? You _were_ the one who thought of it, Els."

"Yes, but - " Elspeth dramatically dropped her face into her hands and emitted a practiced agonised groan.

Val smirked.

"A self-insertion fic?" Elspeth could hardly bring herself to say the words.

Val nodded, still grinning in a rather infuriating manner.

"I can't believe this. You didn't even _want_ to do this in the first place."

Val waved it off with a smooth hand gesture. "Feigned disinterest for purely political reasons, my dear sister. You must admit – now_ I'm_ the one on the high ground."

Elspeth groaned – real, true despair, not the exaggerated kind. "You ... can't... be ... serious..." she ground out between clenched teeth.

Val spun in the computer chair and started typing. "So," she said, and Elspeth could just hear the smirk in her voice. "You and Viggo Morteson, huh?"

Elspeth screamed.

Val knew she would pay dearly for that comment... but just watching her sister's attempts to scratch the words from the computer screen were worth it.

She kept typing. After she died laughing, of course...

* * *

**Chapter One: Relativity**

Elspeth Davidson was tired. You've got to understand – she'd just written a novel and had to go through the annoyance of defending it to a nitpicking little sister, and she was still regularly posting in her blog. So it shouldn't have been such a big deal that she'd given fanfiction a break for a while. Little did she know that that seemingly trivial failure would soon emerge to haunt her...

Blatant visions of doom aside, there were still some semi-logical reasons for this almost unthinkable occurrence. In RL she'd just moved halfway across the world only to have her wisdom teeth yanked out and her sore and sorry self dropped back into the cold academic pond. Which seemed to have frozen over during the break.

So it was after much grumbling, whining, and procrastinating that she hauled herself into the horrid hallways of the hermeneutics department – where such things as overabundant alliteration could be interpreted in an infinite integer number of ways. And what exactly was she doing here? She was an engineer, not a Mdiv!

No, like most wonderful things in her life, she was here because of her sister. Shaking off the last lingering effects of jet lag, Elspeth banged on the appointed door. "Val! Open up!"

The door swung open to reveal her gorgeous little sister, long dark hair flowing over the shoulders of what had once been a white lab coat, and now was some dingy tan/grey.

"Shhhh," Val whispered, pulling Elspeth inside urgently, partly in a real attempt at secrecy but mostly in the hope that Els would forget the last line.

"What now," Elspeth asked, her half-awake mind obviously not up to the task of shattering her sister's delusions of grandeur.

"Shush," Val said again, turning to lead her stumbling sister down the steep staircase.

"Where are we going?"

"Physics labs, of course," Val answered, turning on the lights.

"But... we're in hermeneutics."

"Yeah, right. That was a coded message – you think I would compromise my RL identity by giving the name of the building?"

"Oh" was all Elspeth could say as realisation dawned. "Oh, no" she amended after a minute.

"Oh, yes," Val responded.

"You didn't ..."

Val keyed in the combination and opened the door.

"You... did." It was a flat statement, accompanied with not a little awe.

"Wardrobe 2.0 is ready to go," Val announced. "That is, as soon as you build it."

"I'm an engineer, not a carpenter!" Elspeth scowled. Then she sighed. Val's grins could sure get annoying.

* * *

"Why am I doing this?" Elspeth looked up from under the machine, fishing for another grime-covered bolt from the box her sister held.

"Because I told you to," Val said cheerfully, then dodged the small steel projectile that came sailing her way.

"Since when did I take orders from _you_?" Els retorted.

"You always did, dear. You just never realised it..."

Elspeth had to laugh. "Politicians!"

"Oh, come on now. Could a politician have designed this?" Val indicated the contraption.

"Yeah," Els shot back. "A standing disaster, that's what this is."

Val threw her a hurt look, and burst into tears.

"Hmm." Elspeth studied the situation with casual disinterest. "This what they teach you in POLI 101? Crocodile tears?"

"Only partly," Val replied, in a perfectly normal tone as the tears immediately evaporated. "I'm also way OOC for this thing, so go figure."

"Yeah. Acting about as Sue-ish as your pen name..."

"Ouch!" Val exclaimed. "Not funny... but at least _I_ didn't put part of my _real_ name into it."

"Touché – you just stole from someone else."

Val snorted in a decidedly un-Sue-ish noise. "You must know that my Arwen aspirations are about as high as your IQ."

"Okay..." Els paused for a moment. "That could be taken two ways, you know."

Val arched an eyebrow at her, something decidedly impossible for her RL counterpart. _Which do you think I meant? _

"And since you're the author here," Elspeth continued dryly, "I shall have to surrender to your rather... low... strike."

That outrageous smirk was back again. "You bet."

Elspeth was unwilling to let the point go, however. "You could, at least, have the decency to adopt my last name... or are you ashamed to admit the relation?"

Again the impossible eyebrow and unspoken message.

"But," Val said after a moment, "I'm not above letting you borrow mine."

_Elspeth Evenstar?_ The older girl thought in her mind, not without some distaste. _Sounds almost worse than Val Davidson._

"Then again, maybe not," Val said. "Then you'd be an M.S. EE."

Elspeth groaned and then decided it might perhaps be best to cut the inside jokes for a while and get back to what storyline there was. After all, someone had to be the adult here... but that wouldn't stop her from getting in the last word.

"Just remember," she said, with a not-so-friendly glint in her eye. "The next chapter is mine."

Val quickly cleared her throat and changed the subject. "SO. The main point of all this mindless banter... Wardrobe 2.0. In short – by using Einstein's Theory of General Relativity and the time parameters given us in C.S. Lewis's _Chronicles of Narnia_ – the goings and comings between England and Narnia – I was able to calculate the precise space/time location of Narnia. Because, as you know, the relative velocity of a mass as well as the gravitational forces it is subjected to can affect the amount of time it experiences. This machine will be able to alter our masses and acceleration sufficiently for us to transfer to the exact location of Narnia."

Elspeth blinked. After a moment, she spoke. "You know," she said slowly. "That's really bad physics."

"Well, no one ever said I had to like the stuff," Val grumbled.

"As long as it sounds good?" Els said sarcastically.

Val grinned, pounded in one more nail and flipped on the power switch. "We'll make a diplomat out of you yet," she said.

Wardrobe 2.0 blinked and whirred. Then, with the dramatic release of dried ice, the doors popped open.

"Unless of course," Val said to her sister, "You prefer High Queen."

No one had ever escaped as quickly through the Wardrobe as Val did then, and no one ever followed with such murderous thoughts as did Elspeth.

But all wrongs were instantly forgotten when they blinked their eyes in the light of the other side.

"Impossible," the two sisters breathed in the same instant.

Impossible, yes.

And also very, very bad.

* * *

**Author's Note:** bows to ED Take the reins, darling sister. The next chappie is yours. I can't wait to see what you come up with... on second thought, though, maybe not. Don't kill me too quickly :) 


	2. Chaos

**Author's Note:** You can find Chapter 2 of this fic under the title of Riposte, by . One disclaimer about this next chappie... I do like this fandom but in light of the recent movie (though I haven't seen it it's sure to be horrible), how could I resist throwing a few more rotten tomatoes?

* * *

**Interlude: Yet Another Small Insertion**

Val tried, unsuccessfully yet again, to stop laughing. In all seriousness, this would have to stop sometime soon or she would suffocate. She was going on fifteen minutes of nonstop laughing and Elspeth was still stubbornly trying to write her next chapter.

The noises Elspeth was making were quite curious, a mixture of growls, mutterings, and frustrated shouts as she randomly banged at the keys to try to make them form coherent words and sentences.

"Congratulations, you're now at five words per minute," Val gasped between bouts of laughter.

Elspeth looked for something to throw, but anything that remotely resembled a projectile had been hurled ten minutes earlier. She settled for an incoherent growl and tried to remember which key was 'k'. As in 'kill', which was what she was seriously considering now, exciting plotlines or not.

If she had stopped to think a minute, Els may have realized the efforts she was expending to slowly – very slowly – type out 'and Val died a terrible death' may well be wasted as her sister was now in serious danger of fatally choking on her own laughter.

But the possibility, no matter how desirable it seemed at the time, simply did not cross her mind. Only one thought was discernible throughout the bleeps of her mind: "Stupid Dvorak keyboard!"

**Chapter 3: Chaos**

For Elspeth, it was love at first sight. It stopped her mid-frantic-escape-from-the-pirate-ship's-barrel, and her jaw dropped. This was shortly followed by the rest of her as Val crashed through behind her and sent them both tumbling to the concrete floor.

Elspeth didn't notice the typical oil-and-grease stains on the concrete, or the occasional splatter of dark paint. She only had eyes for only one. "So.... _sexy_," she breathed.

Val peeked under Elspeth's arm to try to find out what had her older sister so entranced. Random, hairy, disgusting dude? No way in hell. Slim, mechanic-type guy wearing sunglasses indoors? Remote possibility.

Then she saw what Els was looking at, and gasped. "Oh. WOW. Too hot!"

Smooth dark skin, powerful lines, and easily capable of breaking Mach 2 – this baby had it all. Elspeth stopped drolling over the engines for a minute to pull herself off the floor and look at her sister. The expression on Val's face shocked her back into the real world – or whatever world they were currently in. Elspeth's eyes narrowed; she knew a fight for the pilot's seat was coming. Despite the fact that neither of them could fly.

"I CALL DIBS!!" They both shouted at once, and sprinted across the hanger to the plane.

The guy with the weird facial hair stopped arguing with the mechanic long enough to turn around, step in their path, puff out his chest and shoot knives out of his hands (wait, knives? Els thought. Oh no – Val's gaining on me!) and growl, "No need to fight, ladies, there's plenty of Wolverine to go -"

An adamantium skeleton, healing factor, super strength and foot-long claws could save Wolverine from firing squads, SWAT teams, and mutant bad (and good) guys, but not from two stampeding girls going for the X Jet. He never knew what hit him.

Val threw a quick glance over her shoulder at Els as they closed in on the jet; she was a good meter ahead. Looking in front of her again, her vision was abruptly filled with the sunglasses guy dashing in front of the jet and hollering, "STAY AWAY FROM MY GIRL!!!" This was followed by a sudden bright red light and the floor giving out beneath the Val and Elspeth's feet. A good deal of smoke and dust was included for theatrical effect.

There was a dramatic second of silence.

Then....

"Ow?" Followed by groans.

"What was that?"

"Us falling through the floor? Along with half the floor? Which is made of concrete?"

"No, I mean, why didn't we, I don't know, FLY over that or develop shields or whatever?"

"I don't know. I mean, we don't normally do that kind of thing."

"But you're the _author_. Make us do cool stuff instead of getting blasted around. And for Pete's sake identify the speakers in your dialog segments."

"In this universe we'd have to be mutants to get superpowers. And we'd need angsty, tragic, poorly written backstories that confuse the fans and involve tons of unnecessary violence."

"I don't care, just..."

Their bickering cut off as a pair of red-tinted lenses appeared to stare down at them. Their wearer did not look happy.

"Ummm.... hi?" Elspeth said. Val gave a little wave.

"We were just - "

Fortunately, deus ex machina kicked in and another face appeared at the top of the crevice. This one, however, was infinitely more scary. It was painted white, black, and red underneath a shock of frazzled dirty blond hair.

Its owner grinned. All the insects and small animals within a twenty mile radius died of fright. "Why so serious?"

* * *

Elspeth would have dropped her head into her hands if the aforementioned hands had not been stuck under her leg and ten pounds of rubble. She settled with mentally dropping her head into her hands, and groaning. "A _crossover_? We're in a freaking _crossover_?"

"Oh, cool!" Val exclaimed, oblivious to her sister's distress. "Cyclops versus the Joker! This ought to be good."

"Um, Val..."

"And technically it's not a crossover because both Batman and the X-men are owned by Marvel, and they're all in the Justice League of America..."

"Val! I hate to break it to you, but to me this looks like Cyclops and the Joker versus _us_!"

Val reassessed the situation, because it sounded better than 'freaked out'.

"Superpowers! NOW!" Els hissed. "And while you're at it, a little more creativity in the witty remarks department would be good, too!"

"Write," Val said, and she did.

The Joker cracked up at that pun, but Cyclops groaned.

"Don't like my sense of humor, do you?" The Joker challenged him. "Let me show you a magic trick..."

Cyclops gave a sardonic grin and blasted the pen out of the Joker's hand. "It was a good movie," he said dryly.

Having bought herself enough time to create superpowers and sob stories for herself and Elspeth, Val grabbed her sister and teleported them into the X Jet. With herself in the pilot's seat. Being the author had distinct advantages sometimes.

"Where to?" Els asked in a particularly uninspired question that was nevertheless necessary for what plotline there was.

"I don't know.... maybe Colorado? I hear it's nice this time of year," Val replied.

Els scowled. Something didn't feel right here, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She tried to shake it off, but the strange premonition kept returning. It couldn't be the jet.... the jet was perfect. Except for Val flying it – Els wondered how she'd learned, but attributed it to poetic license – and maybe that was the problem. Well, it was one of the problems, but strangely enough not the one bothering her. No, what she felt was something much much bigger than just the two of them... something that might just determine the fate of the universe. Something that was terribly, horribly wrong.

Suddenly Elspeth knew what it was. "Val!" she shouted urgently. "Watch out!"

"Where? What? How many of them?" Val exclaimed, looking around frantically for whatever new catastrophe was headed their way. She saw nothing, and turned back to look at Elspeth for a clue.

"Anticlimax," Elspeth sighed.


End file.
